The milkman issues

"Milk adulterated", "Adulterated milk is what Indians are drinking", "Test the milk you are drinking", "How pure is the milk you give your child"- headlines of these sort are often seen in the media. These news boom. After making a front page headline, they linger on the middle pages for a few days. They cover every media possible and then suddenly vanish. 

After reading such news, a few years back we decided to shift to the milk delivered by the local doodhwala. Our neighbours used to take milk from a UP wala bhaiyya. We thought it worth trying.  A wheat coloured, short and strongly built middle aged doodhwala came with his huge tin milk cans of God knows how many litres! He said-" Par mein market rate se do rupaiyye zyada leta hoon" (I charge two rupees more than the market rate). Money not really being the issue, we fixed him up. 

It's almost two years now. We have been drinking the milk supplied by him, without any problems. Our two years old daughter also has safely adapted to that milk's taste. There's only one problem with the milk that we all consume- it keeps on getting expensive after every few months.

When we started the deal with him, we used to pay Rs 48 a litre for buffalo’s milk. He sells buffalo’s and cow's milk at the same rate (buffalo’s milk has more fat content, therefore many milkmen sell it at a higher price). Now we take cow's milk from him which is priced at Rs 55 a litre. A huge difference of seven rupees in two years and a much much higher rate than the market!

Whenever he tells about the price increase, I yell at him with few typical dialogues. Very calmly, patiently and smiling he tells his reasons. Last time he told animal's food has become expensive. But his favorite explanation is- the animal has become expensive. This time he told, maintaining the animal is becoming very expensive.

I remembered the cow at the backyard of our Seoni home- a white colored cow with a small calf by her side. In childhood, I was more fascinated by the calf and captivated by its eyes. I never bothered how they were maintained. Gone are those days where I could have heard about the animal's maintenance from the members of the family. Gone are my grandparents who maintained them. So the next obvious step would be probably to go and check the doodhwala's animals myself. Besides it would be a good visit for my daughter who loves animals. When she sees a cow, she says, "hamma", a cow.